The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

This is the sort of book you might want to read a couple of times over. I am surprised it is so popular because it is not a quick and easy read: it’s a book that requires attention and thought. Edmund de Waal is tracing his family history, using the collection and passing on of Japanese netsuke as the thread. The Ephrussi family began in Poland, moved to Odessa and as grain merchants then became bankers and then moved to Paris and Vienna. The netsuke were collected by art connoisseur and bon vivant Charles Ephrussi, passed on to his cousin as a wedding gift, saved during the holocaust by the family maid, passed on to the writer’s great grandmother and from her to his great uncle Iggie and finally inherited by him. It’s a fascinating story of the family, of the times they lived in – for example Charles was friends with Renoir, with Proust, his circle contains every important name of the period – and the people who were in Viktor’s circle in Vienna were similarly famous. I’ve read a few holocaust accounts as well, but this one was very moving because it was so deeply personal and painful. The story also underscored the long-standing nature of anti-Semitism: this didn’t start with Hitler and that’s something we tend to forget I think. But the anti-Semitism part of it was only part, and there’s a lot more to this history than that. I liked this book a lot. I struggled to concentrate on it for some of the time, especially at the beginning (not helped by reading it on a kindle while travelling, hateful mechanism) but the effort was worthwhile.